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De UBVU wil haar dienstverlening graag zo dicht mogelijk laten aansluiten bij het wetenschappelijke communicatieproces van de onderzoekers van VU en VUmc.

Het wetenschappelijke communicatieproces is volop in beweging. Dit komt door de inzet van digitale middelen binnen de onderzoeksfases: Discovery, Analysis, Writing, Publication, Outreach en Assessment.

Het project doet onderzoek naar naar wat het gebruik is van deze digitale middelen binnen het VU en VUmc, en sluit hierbij aan bij een internationaal onderzoek waardoor resultaten vergeleken kunnen worden met andere landen.

De onderstaande resultaten zijn bedoeld als gespreksstof met de faculteiten om de dienstverlening te verbeteren, vernieuwen en te veranderen, zodat ze beter aansluit bij de fases van de onderzoekspraktijk van de onderzoekers.

1 Aanpak

Er zijn onderzoeksvragen door de vak- en thema specialisten opgesteld. Dit zijn de vragen die nodig zijn om het gesprek te voeren. Voor elke vraag is een raamwerk gemaakt waarbinnen het antwoord vanuit de enquete resultaten kan worden gegeven. Vanuit het oogpunt tijd, is gekozen om alleen de vragen te beantwoorden met de hoogste urgentie.

De vragen moeten antwoord geven voor twee vraag-categoriën: 1. Het toolgebruik binnen de VU in haar geheel 2. Het toolgebruik binnen Disciplines

Met name de laatste vraag-categorie is interessant voor vak- en themaspecialisten, waar ze inzicht krijgen in het tool-gebruik binnen de discipline die ze vertegenwoordigen.

2 Data gathering

Met deze enquete hebben we meegelift bij een bestaand onderzoek van Kramer, B. and J. Bosman, Innovations in scholarly communication - global survey on research tool usage [version 1; referees: awaiting peer review]. F1000Research 2016, 5:692 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.8414.1)

We hebben een custom URL aangevraagd waardoor VU en VUmc onderzoekers in de binnengekomen data is te onderscheiden met de hash 7V4u8a. Van deze custom URL is een verkorte URL gemaakt [http://bit.ly/vu101innovations], zodat we de activiteit van de verspreiding makkelijker bij konden houden. We hebben aan de portefeuillehoudersonderzoek gevraagd deze verkorte URL door te sturen naar hun onderzoekers.

VU101webactivity

In twee e-mail acties leverde het in januari een activiteit op van 543 bezoekers, en in februari 296 bezoekers, in totaal 839 bezoekers.

De VU en VUmc hebben samen ongeveer 6000 personen wetenschappelijke staf.

3 Resultaten

De vraag-categorien komen ook terug in de nummering van de resultaten.

Elke vraag bevat een antwoord, aangevuld met diagrammen. Een vraag begint met een samenvattende uitleg en diagram en daarna volgen de sub-secties met gedetailleerdere diagrammen.

De Scholarly Communication Fases zullen gedurende het hele rapport terug komen: Discovery, Analysis, Writing, Publication, Outreach en Assessment.

VU101innovations

4 Demographics

These demographics form the baseline of our study.

4.1 Survey outcomes

Number of respondents Value
World Wide 20663
Netherlands 2041
VU and VUmc 531

Survey Respondents Worldwide More global demographics…

The values below are within the set of VU & VUmc respondents.

Discipline (multi-choice) Value
Physical Sciences 39
Engineering & Technology 35
Life Sciences 144
Medicine 181
Social Sciences & Economics 176
Law 26
Arts & Humanities 55
Role Value
Number of PhD’s 230
Number of PostDoc’s 70
Number of (Associate, Assistant) Professors 188
First publication year Value
before 1991 61
1991-2000 70
2001-2005 55
2006-2010 79
2011-2016 168
not published (yet) 96
Country of affiliation Value
Netherlands 519
United States 3
Germany 2
Brazil 1
DR of Congo 1
India 1
Italy 1
Latvia 1
Turkey 1

4.2 Organisation demographics VU&VUmc

Faculty Number of scientific personnel
Godgeleerdheid 0
Geesteswetenschappen 0
Rechtsgeleerdheid 0
Sociale Wetenschappen 0
Economische Wetenschappen en Bedrijfskunde 0
Exacte Wetenschappen 0
Aard- en Levenswetenschappen 0
Gedrags- en Bewegingswetenschappen 0
Geneeskunde 0
Tandheelkunde (ACTA) 0

4.3 Survey disciplines and faculty

Survey Discipline Faculty Number of scientific personnel
Physical Sciences Exacte wetenschappen 0
Engineering & Technology Exacte wetenschappen 0
Life Sciences Aard- en Levenswetenschappen 0
Medicine Aard- en Levenswetenschappen AND Geneeskunde AND Tandheelkunde (ACTA) 0
Social Sciences & Economics Sociale Wetenschappen AND Economische Wetenschappen en Bedrijfskunde 0
Law Rechtsgeleerdheid 0
Arts & Humanities Godgeleerdheid AND Geesteswetenschappen 0

6 VU&VUmc vs OECD countries

Despite the fact that the survey has responses from many different countries, we limit the analysis to the 34 OECD member states (checked 3 May 2016), as these countries are more similar to the Netherlands, and comparison is more meaningful. For example, respondents from countries with low GDP often use Zotero (free of charge), while EndNote (paid) is used more in countries with a higher GDP.

The figures below compare respondents from VU University to respondents from OECD countries. OECD respondents are indicated with solid colored bars, VU respondent bars are hashed. All data is reported in percentages, that is, a solid bar up to 80 for google Scholar in the Discovery_search graph indicates that 80 per cent of all VU respondents reported using Google Scholar for Search in the Discovery process. We report all tools per subactivity.

Overall, differences between OECD and VU repondents are not very large, but there are a few tools that stand out.

  • Discovery Mendeley is used relatively often at the VU for reading and searching

  • Analysis Use of SPSS as a tool for analysis is much larger at the VU than for the OECD average.

  • Writing As in the Discovery phase, Mendeley users for reference management are strongly represented at the VU. The preference for Mendeley is at the expense of all other tools except Endnote. For writing, VU respondents are relatively traditional, with high usage of MS Word and low usage of Google Docs and LaTeX.

  • Publication Scopus usage is relatively low. Few VU respondents use the institutional repository for archival.

  • Outreach …

In this section, we report on differences in tool usage between tenured and non-tenured researchers. We consider assistant professors, associate professors and full professors as tenured faculty; PhD students and postdoctoral researchers are grouped as non-tenured.

Here we see all tools in the survey sorted by research phase and research activity.

For these graphs we show the most pronounced differences to the far right and left of each diagram. We calculate the difference by substracting the use in the tenured group from the use in the non-tenured group (both as percentages). The bars on the far-right show the largest positive difference (ie, the tool is more popular among non-tenured researchers); the bars on the far-left show the largest negative difference (ie, the tool is more popular among tenured researchers).

7.1 Discovery

The difference in use for PubMed and table of content announcements for journals stand out as the most significant discrepancies in the Discovery phase. Although not featuring in the ‘top-2’ figures, the use of Mendely stands out when inspecting the more detailed graphs: non-tenured (generally younger) researchers use Mendeley more often in the Reading, Searching and Alert activities within the Discovery phase.

7.2 Analysis

Tool use for analysis is stronger with non-tenured researchers across the board. This holds for relatively new (and more open) tools such as R and Python, as well as for long-standing software such as Excel and MATLAB. The large difference for SPSS is no outlier. Tools for sharing analysis scripts are not very popular, and tool usage is low overall. Somewhat unexpectedly, use of the Open Science Framework is stronger for the tenured then for the non-tenured group. This could have to do with some cases where that the OSF is often used for grant applications, and that this arguably is a more important activity for tenured researchers.

7.3 Writing

The importance of Mendeley in the research workflow of non-tenured researchers is again apparent in the Writing Phase. Among this group, Mendeley is the most popular reference management software, more popular than Endnote—the most popular reference tool for tenured researchers. For the writing itself, MS Word is by far the most popular tool among both groups.

7.4 Publication

In general, tenured researchers use more tools in the Publication phase; probably they simply publish more. This makes it difficult to interpret these figures properly. A few tools stand out. First, PubMed is relatively popular for archival of publications for non-tenured researchers, although in absolute terms ResearchGate is the most popular repository for both groups. GitHub is used mostly by non-tenured researchers as a repository for scripts and software code.

7.5 Outreach

Tenured researchers seem to spend more effort on their research profile, as tool use in this phase is higher for that group. ResearchGate is popular among both groups. Although to a lesser extent (differences are less pronounced), tenured researchers also use more tools for outrecach to a broader public.

7.6 Assessment

The difference is use of Web of Science indicators for impact assessment is striking: about 55% of tenured researchers indicate using the tool, versus appraximately 20% of non-tenured reseachers. Altmetrics and the PLoS metrics are not very popular (yet) in comparison, and are used by both groups, although slightly more by non-tenured researchers.

8 Open Access and Open Science

8.1 Open Intention for Tenures vs Non-tenures

8.2 Open Intention per discipline

9 Tools per discipline

9.1 Most used tool per Research phase in each discipline

9.2 Tool usage for each research discipline

Discipline Colors Legend

9.2.1 Discovery

9.2.2 Analysis

9.2.3 Writing

9.2.4 Publication

9.2.5 Outreach

9.2.6 Assessement

10 Detailed overview for each discipline